I moved to Austin in the mid-1990s as part of an expansion of BSG Corporation, a company for which I was a co-founder. In 1996, two things happened that shaped my engagement in community and social ventures for the next 20 years to present day.

First, BSG was acquired by another large services company for several hundred million dollars. Second, I was accepted into the 1996-97 class of Leadership Austin.

Up until then, my only community activity had been supporting my church and the schools my young children attended. Outside of those activities, all of my energy was poured into helping BSG grow and succeed. Consequently, while I traveled around the country to our offices in locations like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and Seattle, I didn’t even know the names of the streets on the adjacent blocks around my new home in Austin.

So, when we sold BSG, I had a hunger to get to know my community better and was blessed with the means to take the time to do it. After some discernment, mightily enabled by my Leadership Austin experience, I thought that lending my services as a non-profit leader could be a worthwhile way to get engaged in a high impact way.

Long-story short, I interviewed for and won the CEO position (equivalent to Executive Director for many non-profits) at Easter Seals – Central Texas. This is the “Exercise” part of good impact investing, per this post’s title.

Being the CEO of a major regional non-profit (we had a $multi-million annual budget with a 22-county Hill Country territory) gave me the opportunity to see the social services sector from the inside, for which I’m grateful.

The experience was critical for learning the importance of exercising head and heart in different ways. It also enabled me to see how business practices I had learned and considered second nature were under-valued, under-represented, or completely absent in social services.

At the end of my one-year tenure as CEO, performing the real-life exercise as a hands-on social venture leader also helped shape the opinions that I carry today about the strengths and weaknesses of the sector.

Since so much of the non-profit sector competes for social venture dollars, I’ve learned to guide my criteria for judging an organization’s ability to succeed by criteria that are not unlike those of any other new venture I evaluate — non-profit or for-profit.

In fact, I don’t really think in terms of non-profit or for-profit. I think of high-margin, low-margin and no-margin ventures…to me, the financial side of evaluating a venture is all about growth and sustainability.

But, even before the financial sustainability question and its corresponding element, the business model, the four most important issues that I look for can be summed up with the acronym DIET, standing for : Demand, Idea, Excellence, and Team. (Yes, this is where the “DIET” part of the DIET and Exercise title comes from.)

Having been a both social venture leader and in the business of launching new ventures, as I have for years as a principal with Powershift Group, I’m looking forward to going deeper on the DIET and Exercise concepts, sharing my perspective as an impact investor, during our SXSW panel, Sunday, March 15. I hope you can join us and I look forward to your questions and comments!

PS: If you have a moment, and are an educator, a student, or the parent of a high schooler, please take a look at one of Powershift Group’s most recent social venture projects: the Wannabe mobile app. You can download it (free) for all iOS devices, from the iTunes AppStore.

So you are standing in a line at SXSW or waiting at the bar and someone you don’t know has just made eye contact with you.

That awkward moment strikes.

Your internal voice shrieks “you should say something.”

And then, the first thing that comes to mind is “sooo… amazing weather, huh?” leaving you filled with self-loathing for the world’s most unoriginal, impersonal icebreaker.

Later, by the way, to be followed by the second most unoriginal (but necessary) question: “what do you do, Steve?”

Here are three alternatives to checking the weather that I like:

“where are you from?” quickly followed, if you discover you live in the same city, with “oh yeah? what part of town?”

“what’s the gossip?” which half the time gets an immediate reply of “what do you mean?” to which you can define however you want, e.g., gossip about “the best party” “worst speaker” “most famous celebrity who snuck into town” etc.

“how’s the network?” that (admittedly) is a geeky version of the weather icebreaker, but eminently more useful at SXSW, where you never know exactly how the wifi and 4g are going to respond

So, have fun out there at #SXSW2015 and don’t ask about the weather…because, ya know, in Austin it changes every 24 hours in the spring anyhow!

[In late December 2014, a minor institution closed shop, the Austin Startup blog, produced and largely written over the years by my friend and colleague Bryan Menell. I deeply enjoyed being one of the many unpaid, volunteer contributors to Austin Startup, lending my tips and news through my Cleantech, mobileTech, and Freshtech Friday columns over the years.

But, of all of my posts spanning close to a decade, nothing comes close to the response I got from a column I wrote reflecting on the honor of being a Dewey Winburne award finalist.

While Bryan has kept the post available on his Austin Startup archive site, I wanted to re-post it here, so that it would be available to anyone that went looking to catch a further glimpse of what Dewey meant to the early, pre-boom days of modern tech Austin and SXSW. I hope you enjoy!]

Original post date: December 26, 2011

Chances are, you may have never heard of Dewey Winburne, especially if you are somewhat new to Austin. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time to help change that possibility, in a small way.

Because, regardless of whether you never met Dewey Winburne before he died in 1999 or have never even heard the name before, Dewey is a symbol for Austin and its tumultuous, joyous, sometimes depressing, yet eternally optimistic tech start-up ecosystem and the collateral acts of goodwill that thrive alongside the entrepreneurial journey.

I won’t go into Dewey’s life, partly because I personally never met him during his years of greatest visibility as an ambassador for SXSW, and partly because I can’t imagine ever being able to do as good a job as the tribute website that has stood in his honor for years: http://www.patrickcurry.com/dewey/ But, it’s a life that merits a few moments of reflection, which I hope you will take to honor his memory, by following the link.

For several years, carrying forward a tradition of honoring Dewey’s memory, the SXSW Interactive organizers have circulated a call for nominations that goes something like this:

Greetings and happy early October from SXSW-land.

I am writing because you are a past honoree for the Dewey Winburne Community Service Awards, which have traditionally recognized Austin-area technology-related do-gooders…

As a past Dewey honoree, we would love to hear your ideas about your friends / peers / associates / followers / heros who are doing good work through new media in Austin, as well as in other communities around Texas, around the nation, and around the world.

What kinds of people are we looking for? This person might be a teacher who is using new media in some amazing way. Or, this person might be a software developer who has created an app that helps improve the living conditions of a particular area. Or, this person might be a community organizer who has a particularly innovative strategy with regards to technology.

There are numerous other kinds of people who would be a great candidate for the 2012 Dewey Awards. Indeed, just so long as this person works at a grassroots level to better society through the power of new media, then you are on the right track with your idea.

Yes, I receive this email because I’m a past Dewey Winburne Award finalist. In other words, I’m a little Dewey (see below). But, you don’t have to be a past finalist or award recipient to nominate candidates for the award. In fact, in the 2012 SXSW plans are efforts to make the Winburne Award one for a global audience.

Help make it so, by passing on the story of Dewey Winburne to others, by nominating a deserving candidate, and by attending the 2012 Awards ceremony. You don’t have to be a nominee to be a little Dewey yourself.

= = =

From the generosity and good record-keeping of the SXSW organizers, here is a full accounting of Dewey Winburne Community Service Award honorees (finalists and recipients) – the next time you see one of these women or men, take a moment to say “thanks” or – better yet – ask them what they are doing in the community!

Dave Evanssays: Here’s to all the “Little Dewey’s” in Austin, and the “Little Dewey” in all of us. (Yes, that includes you since you are reading AustinStartup!).

What is it that I love about Austin? It’s exactly the sense of community that is evident in this (Steve’s) post: In the 10+ years that we have celebrated Dewey and his spirit via the award created in his honor literally hundreds of people have been shortlisted for this award. That in itself is an amazing testament to what drives Austin: It’s a rare combination of tech-savvy, of hip, of culture and of community mindedness. My wife and I jointly received the Dewey Award in 2001. To this date, it remains our greatest honor.

Working with Dewey was amazing: the accomplishments in and around his vision are now part of Austin’s core fabric. In 1995 we helped organize SXSW Interactive: that was my intro to working with Dewey. His work at AIL with students like Patrick and Louie produced amazing outcomes. Memorable events include the Global Schoolhouse website, shown by none other than Bill Gates while presenting at the Whitehouse in 1996 (Patrick and Louie finished the site at 3am, barely ahead of the 9am talk. I had to call Patrick’s mom and explain why he was working so late…she understood.) We had Austin declared–by City Charter–as friendly to “multimedia” and the small tech companies who would ultimately build Austin’s vibrant tech base, cited in the past month by Governor Jerry Brown as drawing talent away from California. The list goes on.

And so it is, that each and every day, as we go about our work in Austin continuously building and rebuilding and inventing and reinventing our own futures that, in our way, we show the “Little Dewey” inside us.

Jon Lebkowskysays: Steve, thanks for this post. I remember well when I first met Dewey. I was cofounder of an Austin startup called FringeWare, Inc. that was less tied to the local geography and more of a cyberspace phenomenon. We were rooted in the emerging technoculture of the early 90s. When we heard that SXSW was splitting multimedia from film, creating the SXSW Multimedia Conference, our art director Monte McCarter and I showed up to cover it for our FringeWare News Network. I recall that first conference was mostly focused on CD-ROM technology; they had nothing about the Internet, so we were strongly encouraging Dewey and Hugh Forrest to add Internet programming (I think it took a couple of years for this to happen). My day job at the time was working with state poverty programs, and in my first conversation with Dewey I got that he was more concerned with the social significance of technology than with the tech itself, or tech as a business. He wanted to use multimedia to make the world a better place, to give people better lives. In our enthusiastic conversations over the following years, this was a recurring theme. You see this community service focus of Dewey’s represented in the annual award. In a world where the reality and culture of technology is so much about business and marketing, Dewey’s vision is more compelling than ever. We have to remember that the marketplace is nothing without the human element, the people on either side of any transaction, and we have acknowledge and care for people who have less of the advantages that most of us have enjoyed. That’s what “the Dewey” is all about, and that’s what Dewey himself was all about.

Adam Weinrothsays: Steve thanks for posting – While I never met Dewey, I’m glad his memory has become a touchstone for what makes Austin’s tech community so vibrant and familial. The list you posted represents part of a unique “social network” that exists in Austin, and for me, includes friends, colleagues and heroes like you, Jon L, Dave E and so many others.

Randi Shadesays: Thanks to SteveG for a wonderful post and best wishes to him as he heads to China. When I think about Dewey’s work and vision for Austin as a community-oriented high tech hub, and then read the response to SteveG’s post from Dave, I am struck by how many “Little Dewey’s ” there have been over the years and what an amazing impact it has had on Austin, and in turn the world. Thanks to each of them, and here’s to keeping Dewey’s memory alive by inspiring a whole new crew of “Little Dewey’s” in the coming years.

From a Facebook comment by Carl Shepherd, co-founder of Homeaway: “Dewey was, quite simply, a man before his time. Had he lived only a couple of more years, his influence on the Austin tech scene would be known to all, and not just to those of us lucky enough to have known him.” More on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002028344605

Jayne Cravenssays: Co-winning the Dewey with the wonderful Teresa Sansone-Ferguson was amazing – Austin was my adopted home, and SXSW is a homecoming for me when I can get there. I never knew Dewey Winburne, but I benefited from his legacy, both through SXSW, which has brought me SO much in terms of ideas and contacts and very good times, and from initiatives focused on making tech available to everyone that he supported and that I’ve come into contact with during my time in Austin. I look over that list of “Little Deweys” and think, “I know her! I know him! Oh, I know her too!” That’s just how Austin is – I haven’t found a community like it anywhere else when it comes to using Tech for Good, and for everybody knowing everybody. I don’t live in Austin anymore – but you would think I did looking at where my LinkedIn and Facebook contacts are from!

I wish there was an online community for Dewey winners… what a brain trust that would be…

Gordon Montgomery (@xovation)says: Steve, this is a brilliant post thanks. One of my requests on receipt of my award was that we all connect and work together as a group of alumni to bring ALL of our talents to bear in a real way in Austin. The timing could not be more perfect! I am working with a small group to make Austin a City of Transformation, empowering and enabling all communities such that when people arrival here they can see, feel, hear, touch and just sense how our little city is extraordinary. Your list alone gives me access to energizing that possibility. Thank you. You are the uber-Dewey. Happy New Year. GM.

Joel Greenbergsays: I’m one of Dewey’s many, many friends. Here’s a little about our times together.

I first heard of Dewey in the same place I first heard about Human Code: as an award winner at the Intermedia Conference in San Jose, CA sometime around 1993. He was being honored for his addiction laserdisc that he produced while at AIL. Something clicked that year; what we now know as “transmedia” was just beginning to rip into our culture. Dewey’s addiction laserdisc showed that technology could be used for more than corporate training; Human Code’s Mars Lander showed what could be done with 3D. While laserdisc was on its way out, Quicktime 1.0 was on its way in and there were arguments about CD vs. broadband.

When I moved to Austin a year or so later, Dewey and I became friends. I’d be programming in my home office on Duval Street; he’d pick me up and we’d drive his van to some interactive event, talking about all the cool uses of this new media technology and how it wasn’t all about databases. He was excited about the potential of the technology to bring people together, an excitement fueled by his religious experiences of community. Dewey was always friendly, would talk to anyone, and seemed to know everyone in Central Texas. I got some of those stories on tape over lunch at his favorite restaurant, Les Amis.

On Fridays, he’d met with Dr. Kozmetsky, who wanted to be kept abreast of the new technology. Dr. K gave Dewey an office at what was then known as MCC on the Southwest corner of Braker and Mopac. He graciously offered me office space with another fellow traveler, Henry.

Dr. K also gave Dewey the keys to the projector room behind the big auditorium on the first floor. Dewey invited me to go with him and when we opened the door, it was like walking into a time warp. It turned out to be a well appointed on-line editing suite, with 1 inch editing machines and Bernoulli Boxes, huge removable drives that floated on a cushion of air. But technology was changing fast and the equipment was already outdated. It looked like a spaceship that had been abruptly abandoned five years earlier; there was even a sucking sound when we opened the doors for the first time. We had fun acting like technology archeologists, bouncing from machine to machine, trying to figure out if we could use this stuff for some kind of multi-media lab.

A few years later, Dewey got absorbed into his online learning project for the Texas Workforce Commission and I got absorbed into Human Code. By the end, we were both working so many crazy hours, I didn’t see much of him, except times he’d drop by work as Human Code took on his project, or maybe at a user group meeting. The darkness of a glowing computer screen absorbed too much time.

Truth be told, there shouldn’t be a Dewey Winburne Memorial. There should be Dewey. But, he was a human being and as we all are, he was complex. He left behind a wife and child he loved and a community of friends. I suspect many of them have a reaction similar to the one my wife and I have when we talk of him: “!@?!!!&^# Dewey!” His death brought together his community and therefore, was visible because his community was large. I wonder how many other lives have been adversely affected by the business, but in less visible ways?

My wife and I remember all the nice, fun stuff Dewey would do for other people and for us. “Here take this,” he’d say as he’d hand me or someone else some old piece of equipment others were throwing away. Or, “Here are the keys,” to whatever he had. Or, “I can get you in to the SXSW party, take this badge.” Or, “So and so, meet such and such.”

Now, my son’s attending the middle school where Dewey’s wife Dorothy teaches. So despite him being gone, Dewey still seems to be hanging around. I’d love to show him the gadgets I’m putting together, like solar powered holiday lights run by an Arduino, or talk to him about the world our kids our growing up in, drenched in “new” media. I half expect a Tweet from him from the other side.

David J.says: Steve, What a great post. I applaud you for taking time during this mad mad season to post about Dewey and what he meant for SXSW, The Interactive scene in Austin, and Austin in general. I am honored to be a nominee.

Sharron Rushsays: I never got to know Dewey, darn it! I learned about him in 2002 when I received the award and I have always regretted that I missed him. The stories of his life and work are so inspiring, although sometimes when I wax on about “the spirit of Dewey” those who knew him remind me “Dewey was not a saint, you know.”

But he was an extraordinary leader by example and Dewey seems to have had a clear vision to put tech to use in ways that change people’s lives for the better. It is a vision that seems too often lost in gadgetry and commerce. I will always think of Dewey as a person who put real dedication and energy into the practice of tech as a means to include and engage people who had previously been marginalized. Receiving the Dewey award made a huge difference in our work at Knowbility. It helped us to integrate the idea of accessible technology into the conversations at SXSW Interactive and through that to the greater design community. I will always be grateful to Dewey, to Hugh Forrest, and to all the little Deweys for creating such an inclusive community of practice and for keeping that vision clear and strong.

Kat Jonessays: Steve, Thanks for pulling us all together, into conversation and community, about ideas and efforts that matter. There are just so many different ways “the story” can unfold, and each day we can each take a step towards making it an awesome experience! Just like you did by writing this post and inviting the community to the conversation. Clearly, Dewey’s spirit is very much alive. Happy New Year!
Kat

A note from Steve Amos of 4empowerment.com: “Hi SteveG, Happy 2012! Sorry for the delayed response…I did not know Dewey except very briefly but… It is amazing how he inspired so many and a tragedy he was not able to see his vision come to life, impacting so many folks in Austin and around the world.”

Rachel Muirsays: Steve, thank you for your kind and beautiful tribute to Dewey! What a gift to share in celebrating this wonderful life that inspired so much in our community. I’m proud to be a native Austinite and honored to be linked to the amazing legacy and vision Dewey had. I remember being presented with the award by Dave and Jennifer Evans and thinking then, and now about the amazing lives Dewey touched and continues to impact. Here’s to all the little Deweys out there and from Girlstart an especially warm thanks to everyone for helping inspire young girls to dream big in technology!

Dennis Borelsays: Dewey and I were co-workers at AIL in the 90s, where he was initially teaching dropouts in the GED class. He was always coming up with ways for the youth to do hands-on learning and started blending in technology projects. We put together a proposal to the State to do an early multimedia laserdisc on addition targeting at-risk youth. Kids in the program contributed to the scripts, had acting roles, helped shoot the scenes; generally gave the end product amazing authenticity, winning New Media magazine’s national Best Multimedia Product of 1994 Award. The multimedia lab that was created to do the project became a regular part of the educational program. Of course, because Dewey was first and foremost a teacher. Proud to be a little Dewey.

Patricksays: Thank you for the wonderful article, Steve. Dewey was so important to so many of us. I’ve been lucky enough to live out so many dreams that were seeded in that dingy warehouse on 4th street, not to mention the friendships that have lasted all these years, all because of his overflowing generosity and support. He continues to inspire — I just wish he was still here to see everything that he’s created.